It is a sorrow to realize what you are, but not to realize it is the greatest sorrow

It is, as a Life Artist, a big sorrow to realize what you are.

But not to realize it is the greatest sorrow.

And then death becomes terrible, as Tolstoy has depicted it in Ivan Iljitsch´ Death.

Ivan Ilyich is lying in the deathbed and can´t let go of life because of mortal dread.

He screams three days and nights through.

Not until he realizes, that the life he'd lived, hadn´t been an actual life, yes, that he in fact never has lived at all, not until then he can let go of life, and reconcile himself with death.

In desire there is both defence and surrender, and therefore conflict

Now and then you change - according to the strength of your desire - the image, the god, the object, of your sense impressions.

You are for instance fed up with one kind of lust, and therefore you seek a new influence, a new idea, a new symbol.

You reject the old sense impression and adopt a new, with new words, new meanings, new experiences.

You defend yourself against the old, and surrender to the new, which you consider as being superior, nobler and more satisfying.

In that way there is in the desire both defence and surrender, which is implying temptation; and naturally, when you evade from a certain symbol of desire, there is always an anxiety present, the anxiety of becoming disappointed when surrendering to the new symbol. 

Therefore desire contains conflict.

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image, between my and mine, as opposition to what not is my and mine; what causes division.

These oppositional conflicts will always exist if you as a Life Artist not are the separation of the thinker and the thought present in passive listening.

Art of life is implying a complete understanding. It is a kind of communicative reason.

In philosophical counseling truth isn´t something, which can be communicated to another

A central theme in philosophical counseling is that truth not is something, which can be communicated linguistically to another.

A human must be able to receive it, and nobody can help him by giving answers.

He must come to the truth, openly, free and unexpected.

In order to find an answer to one or the other question, the guest must therefore be guided to understand the question itself, rather than just giving an answer to the question.

If the question for instance is about anxiety, the guest must be guided to understand anxiety; that is to say: the guest must understand the one who is anxious, the human who has created the anxiety, and that is himself.

The desire after experience produces the Ego

The desire after experience produces the Ego, the observer, the one who experiences, the one who accumulates and remembers.

The will to power leads to, that the observer distances himself from the observed, and that the thinker places himself outside the thought.

And this is unreality, falsehood.

You are absent from the surroundings, and absent from your thoughts, in the sense that you are on a distance from them, they have so to speak moved outside you, where you relate theorizing, timorous, or agonized to them.

Meditation is a perception where you are melting into a unified wholeness

To meditate is about seeing the whole thing, everything as a whole; that is to say: where you in self-forgetful openness are allowing the thing to fill you out.

Meditation is a presence of something, which is not hidden.

It is a presence of something evidently, something the individual has a clear understanding of.

It is a presence of something straightforward, a presence in naturalness.

It is a perception where you so to speak become drawn into the thing, and are melting into a unified wholeness, which contains middle, fullness and light.

Usually this happens in a short glimpse, inconspicuous; what you often describe as intuitive cognition.

Suddenly you understand something. There is no causal explanation for it.

Philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life, but seeks to clarify the nature of anxiety

In order to discover the cause of anxiety philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life in the way that psychology does, but is seeking to clarify the concept of anxiety, the nature of anxiety, as it is everywhere.

In addition to this philosophy investigates the anxiety as a whole – not the numerous psychological forms of anxiety, but the anxiety.

In philosophy there is only one anxiety.

Though there in the individual person's life are different causes of anxiety, developed by multifarious challenges and reactions, then anxiety still is only one in philosophical sense.

When we are dependent of things in order to satisfy our lust, they are filling too much in our lives

We have tied our thoughts and feelings to the things, so that we can´t feel happy without them: they feed our vanity, they give us social prestige, they give us means for display of force.

We use things for other purposes, than they in themselves are implying.

That we need food, clothes, shelter, is natural and not wrong, but when we are dependent of them in order to be able to satisfy our love of lust, when the things not only become a psychological necessity, but directly an existential necessity, then they are taking an all too colossal place in our lives.

That way arise the fights and the conflicts for achieving and keeping the things, which we are dependent of.

And this fight is unnatural.

To live in a world controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, is to love something for its own sake

Self-assertion is a vice.

Self-assertion is a kind of self-interest, where everything turns around the Ego, and therefore makes the mind mediocre.

To live in a world, which is controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, means, truly, to love something for its own sake, without seeking a reward, a result; but this is very difficult, because the whole world, all your friends, your relatives, struggle to achieve something, to accomplish something, to become something.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought

In the higher degree that the thought is logical, sensible, healthy, objective, unsentimental, impersonally, the more effective and capable it is.

Here the Enlightenment Philosophers were right in their view of the reason.

In the sense the thought is necessary, in that sense you must use the thought in order to be able to function in life.

And still the mind must have the ability to be completely free from all kinds of distortions, so that it can find out what is true.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought.

As long as the mind in any way is distorted it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral

The Life Artist must seek to understand the nature of experience, the beauty in observing, in seeing neutral as in a mirror, and in feeling deeply and incisively without seeking to achieve anything.

As long as the mind of Man in any way is distorted – by neurotic impulses and feelings, by fear, despair, by self-assertion, snobbery and striving after power – it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral.

But this art of seeing, of listening, of observing, is nothing you just can choose to do, and nor is it a question of thinking, which develops towards something else.

There will be anxiety as long as there is a desire of becoming something

In order to understand what you are, the duality-conflict must cease, because the negative response – to become something - is to deny the understanding of what you are.

If you as a Life Artist want to understand for instance haughtiness, you must not try to become the opposite, you must not become yourself absent in the effort of becoming something else, because this creates anxiety.

When the anxiety is removed you can be yourself present.

But it will be anxiety, and therefore absence, as long as there is a desire of becoming something.

It is very difficult for Man to observe something directly instead of through images

The past is based on the images of time, which are of a linguistic kind.

They manifest themselves as symbols.

Language itself is a symbol, and we are used to symbols: we see the tree through the image, which is a symbol for the tree, we see our neighbour through the image we have created of him.

It is apparently about the most difficult for Man, to observe something directly instead of through images, opinions, conclusions, which altogether are symbols.

In the same way symbols play a great role in dreams, and therefore dreams are so deceptive and dangerous.

The meaning of a dream is not always clear, though we realize that it consists of symbols, which we try to decipher.

When we see something, we speak so spontaneous about it, that we don´t realize, that the words also are symbols.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be

The person, who only has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice, seeks to build bridge between the Ego and something else; the Ego, with all its ambitions, initiatives and contradictions, and the other, which either is the ideal, the formula, the concept, or the society.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be.

And precisely herein there is contradiction and conflict, and therefore all energy, vitality, and urge to live, are wasted.

The now´s facts are only a problem when seen from the thinking´s past and future

When you are sitting silent and are becoming absent in mind, you discover how the thinking sucks life and energy out of the present.

Past and future become reality, while reality becomes emptiness.

You discover how the thinking analyzes, separates and divides in order to evaluate, understand.

You discover how the thinking removes the mind from the Now, and creates the inner calculator, the experiencer or the thinker, who compares with earlier, or who hopes and desires something else; the thinker, who slides off from the Now´s facts.

And you discover how the Now´s facts, seen from the thinking´s past and future, can become a problem.

You have pure and simple discovered the cause of your problems.

The hunger after doing something positive, opposite the negative, makes us strive after being something else

The hunger after doing something positive, opposite the negative, makes us strive after being something else; in this struggle we feel, that we are alive, that there is a purpose with our life, that we gradually can remove the causes of the conflict and the sorrow.

We feel, that if we no longer were active, we would be nothing, be lost, our lives would be completely without meaning.

Therefore we continue, and that will say: we continue the divisions, the conflicts, the confusions and the opposites.

But in this process we at the same time feel, that there is something more which we all the time loose, that there exists something, which is quite different, something, which is above and beyond all this distress and misery.

This feeling is the existential guilt, the guilt over the unlived life.

In this way a permanent struggle is going on inside us.

Unless we meet relationships completely, there arise conflicts in the meeting with the challenge

The human being who observes and meets life, as if it for instance only is limited by the economical, or intellectual relationship, is not a Man of wholeness, and his conflicts are countless, because life is the connection with everything; with things, humans and ideas, and unless we meet these relationships completely, correctly, there arise conflicts in the meeting with the challenge.

Our life-expressions become self-circling.

In order to, that the thought can renew itself, it must be finished

The creative thinking, or renewing thinking, is the self-forgetful way of thinking.

But in order to, that the thought can renew itself, it must be finished. That which is finished ceases, and therefore there is a renewal.

To finish thoughts, so that they can end and renew themselves, is equivalent with the process, where the thinker understands himself, because the thinker and the thought are not two separated processes.

And in order to understand yourself, you must partly become yourself present in passive listening, partly slow the speed of your thoughts down.

The act of seeing and feeling without controlling is the act of love

This act, to see and feel without dividing, choosing, ruling and controlling, is the act of love.

The ethical life is this act, and all life is this act.

The real life is the being where you are one with yourself, with life and love.

You are in the middle of the stream of life.

In one direction the thought is necessary, in another direction it is dangerous

In one direction the thought is necessary, in another direction it is dangerous.

In the necessary direction it has to function as instrumental reason on material and technical problems; that is to say: objective and effective.

The dangerous direction is when it instrumentally is seeking to work on human problems and values; that is to say: when it becomes characterized by desires, the desire after material necessaries, or after the highest spiritual goal; that is: the will to power which is seeking to control, to become, to remodel, to acquire in philosophical sense; that is to say: in order to find meaning.

When we understand that the word not is the real, then the mind has released you from the word

When we understand that the word not is the real, that the description not is the described, the explanation not the explained, then the mind has released you from the word.

If you have created an image of yourself, then the image is pieced together by words, by thought-activity – the thought is the word.

You think about yourself as large, small, skillful, or as a genious, or whatever – you have an image of yourself. This image can be described, it is the result of a description.

And this image has the thought created.

But the description, the image, is not the reality.

We create conflict through our aspiration

The painful conflict between good and evil, hope and fear, love and hate, the observer and the observed, has arisen from our striving after achieving something, acquiring something, becoming something.

And this striving gives itself expression in sensuality, in worldliness, or in aspiration after personal fame and immortality.

So we create the conflict through our aspiration.

The subconscious is as insignificant as the conscious

Why do we attribute the subconscious so great importance and meaning?

In the end it is as insignificant as the conscious.

If the conscious mind - on the background of a passion, which doesn't seek to achieve anything - observes neutral as in a mirror, without saying yes and no, then the conscious mind becomes much more important than the subconscious.

In this state all what the subconscious contains, are being brought into daylight; the displacements between the many layers disappear.

The fact is that every society always is runned by some kind of ideology

An ideology is a malfunction in the human mind, which functions with Machiavelli´s implied, terrible, assumption, that the end justifies the means, and where the means to get there is to make people into slaves for this goal.

Today people undoubtedly are being made into empty consumer machines.

There is no doubt either, that we are being supplied with some kind of virtual reality through psychological theories, that seems to justify Machiavelli´s famous and notorious assumption - for instance through elimination of critical thinking.

If you are your reactions present in passive listening, there is no doubter within you

If you as a Life Artist are your reactions present in passive listening, and not at all interpret them, but only give them your full awareness and feeling, you will discover, that there no spectator, doubter or calculator are within you, and therefore no displacement or distortions between the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought.

You are one with the observed and the thought.

You react to a challenge, not with the old brain, but in a completely new way characterized by middle and fulfillment.